About the Author

Jeff Lowenfels is the Cal Ripkin of garden columnists. His weekly
column has run in the Anchorage Daily News for over 27 years, never
missing a single week. Jeff also hosts a weekly garden radio show.
He hosted Alaska public television's most popular show, Alaska
Gardens with Jeff Lowenfels. The show was so popular, at one point
it ran four times a week. Jeff grew up working on his father's farm
in Scarsdale, New York. He helped plant, weed, and mow, and picked
fruits, flowers, and vegetables on eight acres of gardens,
orchards, and beds. For the last 30 years, Jeff has lived in
Anchorage, Alaska, where he has been able to translate his
work-filled childhood into a meaningful and enjoyable hobby,
founding Plant A Row for The Hungry, an active program that created
over 14 million meals to feed the hungry in 2005. A popular
national garden writer and leading proponent of gardening using the
concepts of the soil food web, Jeff is the former president of the
Garden Writers of America and was made a GWA Fellow in 1999. In
2005, he was inducted into the GWA Hall of Fame, the highest honor
a garden writer can achieve. Jeff teaches home gardeners about the
soil food web with a painless and extremely entertaining method.
After just one hour, his audiences know how to return beneficial
biology to their soils and why it is necessary to do so.

Reviews

"Digs into soil in a most enlightening and entertaining way."
--Dallas Morning News

"Required reading for all serious gardeners." --Miami Herald

"The authors have given gardeners an inside scoop on the scientific
research supporting organic gardening." --Pacific Horticulture

"This intense little book may well change the way you garden."
--St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Exceptional. . . . A brief, clear overview of scientific
information with which every gardener should be familiar."
--Monterey Herald

"Sure, it's a gardening book, but it has all the drama and suspense
of an extraterrestrial thriller. A cast of characters without
eyeballs or backbones. Battle scenes with bizarre creatures
devouring one another. Only this book is about as terrestrial as it
gets." --Anchorage Daily News

"All good gardeners know healthy plants start with healthy soil.
But why? And how? In Teaming with Microbes Lowenfels and
Lewis reveal the new research in the most practical and accessible
way." --The Oregonian

"Read this book and you'll never think of soil the same way."
--Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"Sure, it's a gardening book, but it has all the drama and suspense
of an extraterrestrial thriller. . . . Read this book and you'll
never look at soil the same way." --B&B Magazine

"A must read for any gardener looking to create a sustainable,
healthy garden without chemicals." --Virginian-Pilot

"It takes readers underground to meet the critters that live if you
let them under the garden." --Rockland Courier-Gazette